


They Slip Away (Across The Universe)

by robotsfighting



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M, reaction fic, s2e21: Funeral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-19
Updated: 2011-05-19
Packaged: 2017-10-19 14:18:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotsfighting/pseuds/robotsfighting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It reminds you of your mom's funeral, doesn't it?" Kurt and Blaine after the titular funeral. (Reaction fic for 2.21, Funeral.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Slip Away (Across The Universe)

_The long coat was warm and heavy on his shoulders. It held him down. It kept him from floating away, the way that he thought he might, watching the man at the podium speak, and just beyond him, the casket. It was white. Bright, bright white._

 _The floating feeling started in his chest, while he watched the man read through passages of the Bible. Kurt couldn’t hear him over the sound of the feeling. It pushed up from his chest and into his throat, so that he couldn’t breathe, and from his throat into his head, pressing against his eyes. It made the skin under his hair tingle. It was like the air they put in balloons from tanks. The only thing keeping him from lifting up off of the floor was the coat. (He had picked it out himself, standing in front of his closet, staring, trying to remember what he was looking for.)_

 _He was eight years old. He’d never felt like this before. He was worried it wouldn’t ever stop._

| |

“The service was beautiful.”

Kurt hummed in response. He was looking down at his hands, his fingers resting against his thighs, parted and long and pale against the black. He was taking breaths that rattled through his nose and filled his head before escaping his mouth.

“You and Finn did a really amazing job.” Blaine looked over at him, chancing a glance away from the road, his hands wrapped around the steering wheel. His smile was soft and warm. “I’m glad that you were able to do something for Coach Sylvester. She was good to you, in her own, weird way, before.”

“She was,” Kurt said. There it was. The shake in his fingers. He dug them into the fabric of his pants, two bunched fists against his knees. He breathed. He closed his eyes.

“The song you guys sang--” Blaine said, and stopped in a broken little laugh. “I cried. It was – I can’t even describe it. It was beautiful.”

Kurt’s head was bowed. His fingers were clenched hard together. His breathing was starting to roughen and unravel. The feeling was back. It was back.

He was going to float away.

| |

 _His dad was sitting next to him, but his dad was also a million miles away from him. He was staring at the casket with his eyes wet and his mouth tight. Kurt had seen him cry before (so much, lately, that Kurt almost couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t), but not like this. Not like he was holding back so much, with his shoulders tense and drawn in and his breath short and hitched. And he was terrified that maybe his dad would never come back to him, suddenly. Maybe he would always be a million miles away right next to him._

| |

It was the roughness of a sob that made Blaine glance over again. Kurt could see it in his peripheral vision, and the way that Blaine didn’t look away. “Kurt,” he murmured, soft and shocked, “Kurt, what--”

“I’m fine,” Kurt said. He sounded not at all fine, even to his own ears. The words were wet and high and hysterical, and he tensed his body tighter, more compact, easier to handle. “I’m fine, I’m sorry, I’ll be fine.” His hands came up to his face, his elbows on his knees, and he started sobbing in earnest, back shaking, breath scraped in through his mouth in gasps. God, it was so embarrassing, so stupid.

Blaine’s hand found his shoulder. “I’m pulling over,” he said quietly. “Give me a second, I’m just pulling over.”

“No, don’t, I’m--”

“You aren’t fine,” Blaine said. His hand rubbed back and forth against Kurt’s shoulder. Kurt started to cry harder.

| |

 _On Sundays, when they cleaned the house, she would throw all of the windows and doors open in every room and put_ Rubber Soul _in the sound system in the living room. His dad didn’t really like The Beatles, but Sundays were Paperwork Days at the shop, so Sundays became MomandKurt Days, skidding down the hardwood floor in the hall with socked feet, laughing and singing._

 _They stopped every time “In My Life” came on; they would dance between the couch and the TV, the coffee table pushed out of the way for vacuuming. His mom would lift him onto her feet and sway with him, smiling down with his hand gripped in hers, the other arm wrapped around his shoulder. She would sing. “In my life, I love you more.”_

 _She skipped “Run For Your Life” because it scared him, and she would start the CD over again, and again, until the house was clean and full of air and light and the sound of their harmonies from different rooms._

| |

Blaine was standing in the passenger door with one hand settled on Kurt’s chest on the other on his shoulder, peering at him with worry etched into his expression. Kurt couldn’t remember pulling over or Blaine getting out of the driver side and crossing around the car. He tried to take a few unsteady breaths, but they snagged and made him choke. Blaine’s hand on his shoulder tightened. “It’s okay,” he said. He was leaning close, sliding his hand from Kurt’s chest to the button that released his seatbelt. Then he gently pulled Kurt from his seat and closed the passenger door.

Kurt could smell Blaine’s cologne as Blaine carefully opened the door to the back seat and navigated them around it. It invaded his senses, over the smell of impending rain. Blaine’s hand was gripping Kurt’s elbow, the other on Kurt’s waist, and Kurt leaned against him to walk unsteadily, vision blurred. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m sorry, I’m--”

“Shh.”

Blaine slipped through the door, then reached back and tugged Kurt lightly in after him so that he fell gracelessly against Blaine’s chest, and they were both sprawled over the back seat. Blaine reached out to close the door, and then settled back. His hands went immediately to Kurt’s back, palms running smooth over the silver material of his waistcoat. Kurt closed his eyes and buried his head against Blaine’s chest, fingers gripping Blaine’s jacket. His shoulders were still jumping with silent sobs, and he was going to ruin Blaine’s suit, but Blaine’s mouth was against his hair whispering unheard, gentle things. Blaine’s lips pressed against his forehead, his hairline, above his ear. Blaine’s hands shook against his back, and Kurt could hear the pounding of Blaine’s heart through bone and skin and fabric, and it was like a tether.

| |

 _When she was just starting to get sick, she listened to_ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band _. It was just doctors and new medicine at that point, and a feeling in the air, like maybe this was the beginning of something. But she would just smile and get ready in the morning with “A Little Help From My Friends,” singing to Kurt through the mirror while he sat on her bed and she put on her makeup. She let him touch all of the bottles with reverent fingertips._

 _He loved “She’s Leaving Home,” because it had a story, like a musical. He was afraid of “A Day In The Life,” so she would skip it when he was there. But when she would read a book in the living room while he was doing his homework on the floor, he could hear it filtering out through her Walkman headphones. Sometimes she would go back and listen to it over and over again._

 _“It’s sad in a good way,” she explained to him when he asked. Her smile had the tug of something else behind her eyes, soft at the edges. “You’ll understand it better when you’re older.”_

 _He had._

| |

He settled, after a while. He smoothed out, lying boneless and exhausted on top of Blaine, like gravity had returned twice as strong. His eyes were still closed. Blaine’s fingers carded softly through his hair, a little repetitive gesture that made him never want to move. He would gladly lay in the backseat, with his cheek against Blaine’s chest, eyes closed, swimming in the warmth and smell of him, the comfort radiating from him, settling into Kurt’s bones. He felt cleaned out. Cleansed.

He opened his eyes and took a shuddering breath. “I sang at my mom’s funeral.”

Blaine’s fingers through his hair didn’t hesitate, but the hand against his back smoothed down again.

“She loved The Beatles,” Kurt continued, staring between the two front seats and out of the windshield at the overcast sky. “It’s all I can remember her listening to.”

“What did you sing?” Blaine asked softly.

Kurt turned his face a little closer against Blaine’s chest. “Across the Universe. It was her favorite.” (He remembered her telling him that, one afternoon, curled up together on the couch watching _A Hard Day’s Night_. She said she sang it to him at night when he was a baby to get him to sleep. She smiled when she said it, like it was one of her best memories, rocking him to quiet breaths of _nothing’s gonna change my world_.)

“This has probably been a long time coming,” Kurt mumbled humorlessly.

He felt Blaine’s chest contract beneath him. One hitched little breath, and then another. He tilted his head up to see Blaine’s face, and the air caught in his throat; Blaine’s eyes were closed, his expression carefully tight and blank, but there was something in the corners, just around the edges of him, and the uncontrolled breath he took was wet and loud. Kurt’s hand fumbled to find his and press their palms together, fingers interlacing. “Why’re you crying?” he murmured.

Blaine shook his head. His hand squeezed back at Kurt’s, hard, and didn’t let go. His breathing was ragged, and his eyes were still closed _tight_ , his face flushed and pinched with the effort of holding himself in. “You’re so fucking – strong,” he managed. He opened his eyes then, to look at Kurt, and they were filled with tears. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m ridiculous.”

Kurt huffed his own unsteady, breathy laugh. “That makes two of us.” His thumb brushed over the skin of Blaine’s hand. “And I’m not strong, as evidenced by the breakdown I just had in the backseat of your car.”

Blaine could only shake his head and close his eyes again.

| |

 _In the hospital, she sang “Something” with Kurt wrapped up in her arms, both of them careful of the IV and the leads attached to her heart monitor. She rested her cheek against his hair and whispered the words, punctuated with tiny sniffs. He clung to her, hands wrapped in the white hospital gown, tucked against her, letting himself cry because she was._

 _“You’re asking me, will my love grow? Well, I don’t know, I don’t know. You stick around and it may show, but I don’t know, I don’t know.”_

 _They never really talked about the possibility of her not coming home. This was as close as they got._

 _“I don’t wanna leave her now. You know I believe, and how.”_

| |

“I’ve never lost anyone,” Blaine said. There were still tears under his voice, but his grip on Kurt’s hand had loosened a little. “I never knew my grandparents, and I don’t have any aunts or uncles, so I don’t know what that feels like.” He was staring up at the ceiling of the car, his free hand tangled in Kurt’s hair. “I can’t imagine what it must have taken to do this for Coach Sylvester.”

Kurt shook his head. He took a very deep breath, then let it out. “It’s good that you haven’t lost anyone. I hope you don’t ever lose anyone.”

Blaine’s hand smoothed Kurt’s hair down. “It makes me feel guilty,” he murmured. “You’ve been through so much, but you’re so strong about everything, and I’m – really not.” He laughed sort of miserably. “As evidenced by the breakdown I’m having in the backseat of my car, after the breakdown you had in the backseat of my car.”

Kurt smirked. “Look how perfect we are together.” Blaine laughed again. Kurt pressed himself tighter to Blaine’s chest, his cheek lying directly over Blaine’s heart. “It’s been a hard day. You shouldn’t feel guilty for having _feelings_ ,” he said. “I probably love you most when you’re about to fall apart.”

Blaine’s chest under Kurt’s cheek hollowed with a long exhale.

| |

 _The sky was gray and unchanging, and the cold pressed down on him, slipping through the gaps of his coat. He looked up at the unending mass of clouds instead of beside him at the white casket. But he pressed his hand against it, like maybe he could reach her through it. Like maybe he could send the song through._

 _“Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup. They slither while they pass, they slip away, across the universe.”_

 _The other mourners were hushed, watching him. He couldn’t look around at them, because he knew that so many of them were crying, and he couldn’t start crying. This was for her. He couldn’t start crying in the middle of the last thing he could give her._

 _He’d asked her once what_ jai guru de va om _meant, and she had only shrugged, grinning._

 _“It doesn’t matter what it means,” she’d said. “It’s just peaceful, isn’t it?”_

 _So he sang the words, and didn’t worry about what they meant, until they tapered off into silence._

 _Then he went back to his dad, and he watched them start to lower her into the ground, and he cried. But his dad looked down at him, and he held out a hand, and Kurt reached for it and clasped them together._

 _And it was enough._

| |

The rain started to patter on the roof and the windshield, but neither of them moved. They breathed together in the silence, in the soft gray light falling through the windows. Kurt traced patterns against the white of Blaine’s shirt. Blaine’s fingers found their way back to Kurt’s hair and ran through, soft and perpetual.

“Thank you for this,” Kurt said after a long time.

Blaine hummed. His eyes were closed, and he was smiling a little. He drew in a breath, and sang on the exhale. _“And when the broken-hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be. For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see. There will be an answer. Let it be.”_

Kurt smiled against him. He closed his eyes and listened to Blaine sing the rest of the song, feeling the vibrations of each word through Blaine’s chest, the rise and fall of Blaine’s breath like floating in the pull of an ocean. He drifted, and listened, and tangled their hands back together.

 _“Whisper words of wisdom. Let it be.”_

And it was enough.


End file.
